The Big Picture

More than two hundred years ago, Lewis and Clark traveled through the northern Great Plains and witnessed an endless sea of grass abounding with millions of bison, pronghorn, deer and elk. Immense flocks of birds blanketed the open sky. The Great Plains during this time encompassed a wealth of life rivaling the African savanna. Today, however, much of the prairie and its plentiful native plants and animals have disappeared. In fact, less than one percent of native prairie landscapes have any sort of long-term protection.

In northeastern Montana, American Prairie Foundation (APF) is leading a unique effort to protect the species-rich grassland of northeastern Montana, which represents what once dominated central North America by assembling a multi-million acre wildlife reserve. Called American Prairie Reserve, this American treasure will one day become larger than Yellowstone National Park and rival in splendor the Serengeti of Africa and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

APF’s mission is to conserve an important grassland resource for future generations by acquiring private acres and eventually linking them to an existing two million acres of public grasslands. When these fragmented public and private lands are connected, APF will provide a continuous land area with an overall wildlife management focus, the largest of any kind in the continental United States.

Progress to Date

APF owns and/or leases more than 121,000 acres of deeded and public land. Additionally, the ranches APF has purchased have historically held grazing privileges on 63,000+ acres in the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge. As directed by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service policy, those habitat units will be rested from grazing until the Comprehensive Conservation Plan (CCP) is approved. After the CCP is approved, the Service will use various management tools to promote healthy plant and wildlife habitat conditions.

Next Steps

APF will continue to purchase key private lands linking them to existing public lands in order to assemble a fully functioning grassland ecosystem able to support a full complement of prairie-based wildlife. We believe that by purchasing private lands across a broad area we can reduce habitat fragmentation and enable the area’s wildlife to range unimpeded in a large landscape. By eventually placing APF’s deeded lands into conservation easements, APF will ensure the protection of this land in perpetuity. Because a key tenet of our mission is public access, the land we own will never be “locked up,” but instead open to a variety of public uses.